GM CEO, Brands Stopped Tweeting After Elon Musk Took Over

A few days after Elon Musk finalized his acquisition of Twitter in late October, General Motors announced it was pausing paid advertising on the social media platform as it evaluated Twitter’s new direction.

At the time, GM said it would continue to use the platform to interact with customers. Bloomberg looked at GM brands’ and CEO Mary Barra’s Twitter accounts recently and found they haven’t posted since October 27, the day Elon Musk closed his $44 billion purchase of the microblogging platform.

Since then, Mary Barra and the official accounts of General Motors, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC haven’t posted a single tweet, although the brands continue to reply to questions from customers. 

This hints at a company-wide policy and shows that GM’s retreat from Twitter was more comprehensive than indicated when it paused advertising last month. Automotive News contacted the automaker, which replied expressing concerns about the platform’s new ownership.

“With a competitor owning the platform, it’s important for us to ensure our advertising strategies and data can be safely managed,” the representative said, adding the company sees Twitter as “just one of many channels available” to share information and would “choose the channels and platforms that can be most effective at any point in time.”

The company also noted that it would engage as necessary with customers; it didn’t address Mary Barra’s absence from Twitter, though. Other GM top execs appear to have neglected their Twitter accounts in recent weeks as well. Duncan Aldred, Global VP Buick & GMC, last tweeted on September 1, while GM President Mark Reuss no longer shows up on Twitter, even though he used to have a quite active account.

Other top executives, such as CFO Paul Jacobson, design boss Michael Simcoe or GM North America head Stephen Carlisle don’t appear to be present on Twitter either. However, General Motors‘ BrightDrop electric van business and Cruise autonomous vehicle startup, in which the automaker has a controlling stake, have continued to tweet—as have their CEOs, Travis Katz and Kyle Vogt.

Cruise spokesman Aaron McLear told Bloomberg the company finds Twitter to be an effective away to communicate with users and people in the tech community.

Other major automakers and industry leaders are still tweeting, including Ford Motor Company and its CEO Jim Farley, BMW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Renault, Stellantis, Toyota, Volkswagen and more. The VW Group and its brands have halted all paid activities on Twitter until further notice, a spokesman told Reuters. Audi went one step further and also halted organic activities, such as direct posts; its last tweet is from November 2.

Meanwhile, EV startups including Rivian, Lucid or Fisker continue to tweet as usual, although their CEOs either stopped tweeting (Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe last posted an update on October 28), weren’t present on Twitter to begin with (Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson) or deleted their account (Henrik Fisker, as early as April 2022).